


How Strange The Change

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: Hyakujitsu no Bara | Maiden Rose
Genre: Community: spook_me, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 17:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than thirty years after the end of the last Great War, Klaus receives two visitors, one unwelcome, the other very much desired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Strange The Change

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to ElmyraEmilie for looking this over for me.
> 
> This story is pretty much a shameless indulgence for me. However, my shameless writing indulgences run to bleak misery, not pretty boys bonking. 'Choose not to warn' is a real warning here rather than a default, so please read at your discretion.
> 
> As at August 2014 I locked this story to the archive as really weird stuff was happening with hit numbers and this story ended up with a ridiculous number of hits relative to any of my other stories in any fandom. I've unlocked as of December 2014 and hopefully the weirdo RSS connection or whatever caused the issue is now done with.

If Klaus had been in the back fields then his visitor would have no doubt banged on the door, cursed a few times, and then left with a sense of a task carried out against his better judgement. But since the fence near the road was in need of repair, Klaus saw the shiny, cardinal red car turn down the narrow lane that led to the house. He emerged from the cover of some bushes and trudged up the gravel drive before the stranger had the chance to give up.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Klaus enquired. He still held his mallet in one hand. A man well over six foot in height gripping a mallet was the answer to a lot of issues with strangers.

The man turned from banging on Klaus’s locked door. He held a large envelope in one hand. “Ah, von Wolfstadt,” he said.

“You have the advantage of me.” 

The stranger’s face twisted in irritation. “I sent you a letter. I did tell you that I would call in.” 

“I didn’t get your letter.” This was possibly a lie. Klaus certainly hadn’t read any letter, so he didn’t consider it that much of one.

“Then perhaps you should consider installing a telephone. I hear they’re all the rage,” the man said with considerable sarcasm. “Look, I’ve only come because my father asked it. If you can’t be bothered, then fine, I’ll turn around and be off. It’s not as if I don’t have things to do.” 

“And who is your father?” Klaus asked, although he was developing suspicions. There was something about the timbre of this man’s voice that raised a memory.

“Augustus Hartmann – your mother’s friend. I understand that you were under his command at some point in the Great War,” the man, Hartmann, said stiffly. Klaus wondered if the rod up his arse was because of Klaus’s clear lack of welcome or because Klaus’s war record was an embarrassing subject.

Colonel of General Staff Hartmann – dear old honorary Uncle Augustus, family friend and spymaster. “Of course, Uncle Augustus. I appreciated his visits when I was in prison. Then you must be Erich. I remember the Hartmann brood at the old family picnics – a great liking for apple strudel from recollection.”

Erich’s face turned not quite as red as his car at this blatant reference to two shameful past events. The top of his bald head was turning red too. Klaus permitted his gaze to rest a little too obviously on it, and grinned as it seemed that Erich might turn purple with resentment. Klaus’s hair had paled into nondescript sandiness with age, but at least he still had some.

“My father is frail now, but he keeps well enough for a man of his years.” Erich looked reproachful that he had to mention this news without prompting.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Klaus said gravely, and noted with mild contempt that Erich didn’t seem to notice the ambiguity in his remark. “You came on his behalf. Is that for me?” He nodded in the direction of the envelope in Erich’s hand.

“Yes, yes,” Erich said and came forward to thrust his packet towards Klaus.

“What is it?” Klaus chuckled. “I’m a little old to be conscripted now, surely.”

The shocking taste of this sally did nothing to put Erich at ease. “I don’t know. Well, yes, a letter, a magazine. He thought the articles might interest you, and he never, uh, he never had much good opinion of the mail service.”

The mail service was reputedly a model of efficiency. More likely honorary Uncle Augustus wanted his packet personally delivered to Klaus for his own reasons. “Wise of him, given that I missed your letter,” Klaus said, and somewhat unwillingly took the envelope into his own hands. “Thank you.”

“I was happy to assist my father,” Erich lied. “Look, it’s a long drive out here, and I’m dry as a bone. Might I beg a glass of water before I go?”

“Of course,” Klaus said. “Permit me a minute.” He walked down the side of the house to the back entrance.

Erich followed, uninvited, as Klaus entered the cool dimness of his kitchen to place the envelope on the table. By all means, Klaus thought, inspect my shabby, impoverished house and carry your tales back to Daddy. He turned to the pump, and Erich’s brows rose. 

“You really do rough it here, don’t you?”

Klaus shrugged. “It was neglected for years what with one thing and another, and I don’t have that much money now. But I muddle along.” He looked Erich in the face as he made his explanations, and was pettily pleased to see another flush. Amusing how these honest, bluff heroes of a thirty years past war found it hard to meet Klaus’s eyes. And Klaus the guilty one. “It works well enough – and we did install pipes to the bathrooms back in the day.” He drew water into an ancient white and blue enamelled tin-ware pitcher, and then poured Erich a glass. It was taken, and swallowed.

Klaus’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the envelope, and whatever Augustus Hartmann had thought worthwhile to pass on after several years of no communication between them. Klaus granted that the silence was not all Hartmann’s fault. Erich was looking out the window at the garden, and Klaus barely noticed him nor sought to hustle him out, too busy debating whether he should open the envelope or simply throw it on the fire. 

He turned his head to the fireplace in reflex at the thought, and then caught his breath. Scent filled his nostrils, sweet and sharp, the essence of a garden of flowers. He made an involuntary noise, and Erich turned his head.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

“A frog in the throat. My apologies.” Klaus wondered if Erich Hartmann had noticed that delicious smell, rather than the fug of stale food, bad drains, cigarettes and booze. “Don’t let me keep you.”

This time Erich’s eyes met his without difficulty. “Indeed. I’ve imposed long enough.” They stepped out into the summer sun once more. Perhaps Erich had noticed the scent of flowers where there were none, or maybe he simply remembered a long ago time and children thrown together by their parents’ acquaintance. “You have no roses, von Wolfstadt. It was always roses with your family, wasn’t it?” He looked down the slope towards the empty beds, the earth pale brown and unwatered in the summer brightness.

“My roses suffered die-back. It happens sometimes. Neglect, a blight, and the only answer is to rip them out and let the soil cleanse itself.”

Erich grunted, uninterested already. Not a gardener, then, Klaus judged. “Yes, well, good day to you. I must be going.”

“Yes,” Klaus said. “Safe journey.” He didn’t wait for Erich to reach his shiny car before he turned away and walked once more to the back of the house, pausing a moment where Erich had stood to stare at the empty beds. Of all the cares and disappointments of Klaus’s unwilling return home, the death of the roses was the one that Claudia had spoken most of. Easier than the rest. Her letter to him advising of the beds’ canker and death couldn’t have been more heartbroken than if he’d received it still drenched with tears. He should grass the beds over, but he hadn’t. Not fifteen years ago when he’d finally ripped out the stark, long-dead bushes, not now.

He needed a cigarette and a stiff drink.

~*~

He took Hartmann’s envelope into the little parlour that used to be the breakfast room and was now his sitting room. It was furnished with the oak table and the chairs with their embroidered backs, threadbare now, and the old sideboard. He’d hauled a shabby old couch in there, and the old wooden –cased radio from his parents’ room. There was plenty of grain spirit in the house but for this, he thought, he would finish the old bottle of Huntsmaster in the sideboard. He lit his cigarette first and leaned his head against the back of the couch, inhaling deeply and holding the smoke as long as he could before pushing it all back out again. Then he placed the bottle on the little side table, alongside a heavy glass cut with intricate facets, and opened Augustus Hartmann’s package.

Out came a NewsWorld magazine dated six months ago, and a folded letter. The NewsWorld cover was bright with red font, proclaiming ‘The East’s Technological Triumph’. The picture was the face of a young Eastern woman holding a little transistor radio beside her cheek; her skin was painted white, and her dark hair adorned with purple wisteria.

Not a good start.

Klaus turned the magazine over, and picked up the letter.

“My dear Klaus,” it began.

“It’s a while since you and I last spoke or communicated, but I think of you now and again. I still take an interest in our friends to the East. Fascinating people, as you know.”

Klaus’s eyebrow rose. Was that _sarcasm_ , dear Colonel of General Staff Hartmann? He read on.

“This magazine came into my house recently. The articles are once over lightly, but have their interest. I particularly draw your attention to page fifty-two, where there is mention of your old acquaintance and target, Taki Reizen. I think that you’ll find it of interest.”

Klaus’s drink became of interest. He stared at the words, holding the letter in one hand while he sipped at the liqueur with the other. What was Hartmann about? Did he think that reading page fifty-two would pack Taki up in a neat little bundle to be put back into the brown envelope and forgotten? Had Hartmann turned cruel in his dotage, or was this entirely a side issue to give Erich the opportunity to report back directly on one of Colonel Hartmann’s rare failures of judgement? Klaus pondered a moment, and then put his pondering aside. More important these days was thought about the drainage in the west back field, about his vegetable garden, about the rot in the attic.

Hartmann’s motives didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was whether Klaus would pick up the magazine and read anything about Taki Reizen, dead thirty years and more. Klaus took a good swallow from his glass – Huntsmaster was high-proof, but Klaus was long inured. Then he picked up the magazine and paged slowly through it from the beginning, noting the pictures and articles, skimming some of the text. Hartmann was right. Not a deep piece of journalism.

Page fifty-two, the article was titled ‘Technology, Tradition, Superstition.’ There was a small black and white picture of Taki, regal and serene in court costume, and so very young. Taken on his eighteenth birthday, according to the caption. Klaus swallowed, and read the body of the article. It recounted Taki’s posthumous reinstatement to honours and certain court records after Katsuragi’s death in the earthquake that ravaged his domain and killed hundreds in building collapses and fires. Politically, Taki’s reinstatement marked the ascension of a particular court and government faction, but the journalist recounted the fear and rumours among the common people that Taki was an angry ghost, a great man betrayed and unjustly killed.

He was a condescending fucker, that journalist, was Klaus’s thought. _A young military commander of tremendous promise, although guided in the war by wiser heads_ , went one line. “Oh, you whoreson!” Klaus exclaimed out loud, driven beyond endurance. “Who told you this horse shit? He was Alexandros come again. Guided by wiser heads, my arse, and that was why they feared him.” He threw the magazine aside to land with its leaves creased and crumpled on the floor and stood and paced a few steps, before he threw open the door and marched up the stairs to the curved balcony of his bedroom. It permitted as broad a single view of his land as possible, not that there was much land these days, just enough to keep him. The sky was clear summer blue above it all.

It came back to him then, the frustration, the despair. He knew that Katsuragi’s faction actively favoured Eurote, where most of the Nine Families regarded Eurote’s influence as distasteful at best. He knew that Katsuragi wanted Taki brought down, out of his way. He sank to the balcony floor and looked out through the railings. Meetings that Klaus had been excluded from. Katsuragi’s face – smug, sure. That last night, Taki’s hands and mouth on him, aggressive. Willing. “Tell me,” Klaus had begged, but Taki had said nothing but, “I love you, you know.” The words had filled Klaus only with terror.

And then he had been ignominiously bundled behind the Western Line, with a letter in his jacket pocket declaring him an incompetent spy spared by Taki Reizen’s honour and respect for their previous friendship. “I do not claim to understand your people’s code of honour, but I presume that von Wolfstadt will act according to it,” Taki had written in a delicately scornful letter addressed to the High Command, exquisitely penned on elegant paper.

It had been a risk. They might have shot Klaus as a traitor but, confused by Taki’s letter, they merely imprisoned him. He had killed Saxon soldiers, regardless of Hartmann’s arguments of its necessity, and Klaus’s intelligence had been of doubtful use from the very beginning.

The rails pressed hard against Klaus’s cheek. “You could have shown me some mercy, Taki. I know you have it in you. Maybe you dropped a house on Katsuragi, but you wouldn’t have harmed his little people, whatever some idiots think.” 

Klaus had heard his oblique, merciless orders, and kept to them as far as he was able in the long years. Suicide was dishonourable; besides, he hadn’t finished the fence repair.

~*~  
He felt like eating that evening and made a meal of potato fritters and bacon, done to a turn. He gorged himself on it and then sat at the big wooden table in the kitchen. Everything so unchanged since his youth and as changed as could be, and he smoked a couple of cigarettes.

It grew dark, or as dark as was possible with a stately full moon sitting low in the sky. Klaus’s narrow kitchen window framed it, and he stared for a moment before he snatched up the kitchen bottle of corn liquor and went outside into the increasingly cool night air. He walked down the gravel path, stones crunching under his feet, and then stepped onto the damp grass to sit amongst the empty rose beds. He shivered once; it was growing quite cold, and Klaus wasn’t some hot-blooded young man any more. He smiled a moment in reminiscence for youth and all its heats and hungers, and then lifted his bottle and took a long swig. It burned going down his throat, and it burned in his gut. If Claudia knew, she would scold him and order him to a doctor, and what would be the point of that? A doctor would only tell him to stop drinking, and how good was Klaus at doing what he was told anyway? It was a very select band which he’d ever obliged with genuine obedience.

He waited. The scent in the house earlier today had given him hope but hope slowly wore away, leaching out into the cold and dark. Everything was icy silver in the moonlight, even one boozy old man casting his grey shadow on the ground. Still, Klaus was stubborn. He could wait as long as he had to.

To his left – there! Not a shadow, but a figure white as the moon, although not as bright. Klaus moved on stiff, complaining legs, and pushed himself into something like kneeling, watching while his chest ached worse than his bones. The shape came closer, a slim young man in billowing, foreign clothes. What were they called in Taki’s language? Most of the words were gone now, it being a long time since Klaus had needed them. A grand sword, sheathed, hung at the figure’s waist.

Klaus smiled. How could he not? “It’s been a while,” he said softly, coaxing the figure like he might a hungry, feral cat.

Taki came forward on pale, glimmering feet that showed no sign of sinking into the bare, cultivated earth he stood upon, but he stopped short of being close enough to touch. His face was stern, and he cast a glance at Klaus’s bottle with obvious disappointment. 

“Our agreements were equivocal enough when you were alive. What makes you think that would change now?”

Taki shook his head. Reproof. Klaus shrugged. He knew that men seeing ghosts ought not to smile as he was doing. Men failing their loved ones as he had done (always, damn it, always) ought not to grin. He sobered - as much as he could, with his hand curled around the neck of his bottle - and sought for words more suitable to this rare occasion. It was seven years since the last apparition. 

All he had, however, were questions. “I never know,” he said. “Who this is meant to punish, I mean. Is it me or is it you?” He took a ragged breath, all humour gone. “If it’s me who keeps you here, you know that I’m not sorry.”

Taki turned his head as if to look behind him, and when he faced Klaus again there was familiar emotion in his face. Shame. Yearning. He took a step closer, then another, while Klaus waited, his heartbeat wild in his chest. Then Taki stooped and his hand rested against Klaus’s cheek like the touch of snow. In the middle of that barren garden he offered Klaus’s brow a chill, spectral kiss, just as he had the time before, and the time before that. Klaus’s one and only rose.

Klaus shut his eyes. When he opened them again the garden was empty, brightened only by the indifferent moonlight.

“Come any time, Taki,” Klaus said, resigned to the cracking of his voice. “You know you’re always welcome... my master.”

 

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little  
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little  
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know  
think so little of me that they allow you to go

When you’re near there's such an air of Spring about it  
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it  
There's no love song finer but how strange  
The change from major to minor  
Every time we say goodbye

_Every Time We Say Goodbye_ Cole Porter

**Author's Note:**

> If this was actually written for maidenrosememe it would have been posted there but after I got the idea I went wandering around the anon meme because there was a fill posted there, and I hope it's okay to say that I thought of this anon. :-)
> 
> http://maidenrosememe.livejournal.com/449.html?thread=3265#t3265


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